THE GISTOne of America’s original craft brewers, Sierra Nevada, has produced a collaboration beer with 630-year-old Bavarian brewery, Riegele. The beer, named Bayerisch Ale 2, combines three of Riegele’s house yeast strains with a clutch of different U.S. hops, including Amarillo, Citra, Simcoe, and Cascade.

WHY IT MATTERS

Germany is seeing a wave of U.S. craft beer culture landing on its shores at the moment. Stone is already producing beer in its new Berlin-based facility, which will soon also become one of the San Diego brewery’s “world bistro and gardens” sites when work is completed later this year. Sierra’s venture into the German beer market seems to take a different approach, however, by celebrating and collaborating with German brewing heritage rather than standing on tables and shouting revolutionary rhetoric.

(It's also worth noting that this is the second time Sierra Nevada, itself now a second-generation family brewery, has collaborated with Riegele. The first was the award-winning Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest, which was released in 2015.)

It would seem there's more than one American candidate impacting German beer culture of late—and which method has the most positive impact on such a traditional and entrenched beer culture remains to be seen. Both are banking on hops for the win.